Plastic canisters and lids with tamper-evident features are known in the art. A great many of these canister and lid assemblies include tear-off strips, usually with the strips constituting the bottom portion of a depending skirt which is located around the perimeter of the lid. Examples of such are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,669,630 to Kenyon and 4,037,748 to Stubbs. It is also know to utilize shrink bands, such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,538,740 to Peterssen, as tamper-evident features on cap and container assemblies.
Instances of product tampering have dictated that sensitive products, such as food and drugs, be packaged in a structure which would make tampering difficult. Unfortunately, the ability to make packaging tamper-proof is more of an ideal than a reality, since tamper-proof packaging which could reasonably be utilized for packaging small quantities of consumer products do not exist. It has, therefore, been an objective to produce tamper-evident packaging, such that it would not be possible to gain access to the contents of a package, in a grocery or other retail store environment, without visibly disrupting the package to such an extent that a reasonable consumer would be aware that the integrity of the package had been breeched. It is a goal of the packaging art to produce tamper-evident packaging which is both effective and economical.
It is an object of this invention to produce reusable plastic canisters and reclosure lids which may effectively be made tamper-evident by means of a shrink band and which canisters and lids, even when fabricated with high-speed molding techniques, are able to effect hermetic seals in virtually all instances. It is a further object of this invention to produce canister, lid and shrink band assemblies which can be vertically stacked to form a column and which have primary and secondary nesting means.